Resources

LHS Show Notes #074

Introduction:

They barely get the introductions done, and Richard is off on a tangent about the great hobo migration in Texas. All this just proves Larry Bushey of the Going Linux podcast is right: LHS rambles. More on this in a moment.

If you're interested in running packet radio with your Linux computer, you'll likely need a terminal emulation program to communicate with your terminal node controller(TNC). There are several Linux tools you can use:

setserial is a command-line program designed to set and/or report the configuration information associated with a serial port.

microcom is a very basic terminal emulation program. Tip: pressing Control-\ will access the menu.

minicom is a menu-driven communications program. It emulates ANSI and VT102 terminals, has a dialing directory and auto zmodem download.

At the command line, type "minicom -s" to begin configuration. The first time you run "minicom -s", you'll probably want to run it as root so you have write access to the configuration file.

The first serial port in Linux is called ttyS0.

Most things will work at 9600 baud, 8 data bits, no parity bit, and 1 stop bit.

Text based modem control program.

Runs in a terminal screen

It's useful for other serial port tasks, too.

Ctrl-A followed by W turns on line wrap, so you won't have long lines truncated.

Install on a Debian-based system by using "apt-get install minicom" or use Synaptic.

Ilan Rabinovich, of the Southern California Linux Expo, SCALE, sent a voice mail asking that we play promotions for the event. Unfortunately, we're too late with releasing the LHS episodes to promote SCALE in time. We'll try to do better next year.